When Life’s Way Too Much: Sara Hagerty

Sara: There are times where we are absolutely intended to overcome, where we're
intended to really push ourselves to the limit. But I think there are also times where we as a culture are very oriented towards not paying attention to our limits and overcoming our boundaries, such that we can run ourselves into the ground.

So, it really boils down to what is my motivation and why am I pushing so hard? Is God leading me to do this? Or am I doing this because I'm scared out of my mind if the next season doesn't include another level of achievement?

Shelby: Somewhat anxious, always authentic, this is Real Life Loading…

Well, I'm Shelby Abbott and I'm here with the author of multiple books, including one called, The Gift of Limitations [subtitle: Finding Beauty in Your Boundaries]. This is Sara Haggerty.

Okay, so, you live in Kansas City, are you a Chiefs fan? And if so, are you feeling a little smug about the fact that you won back to back championships?

Sara: Oh my goodness, well first of all, you can't live in Kansas City and not be a Chiefs fan. Like, I don't know who those people are. There's three of them. I haven't met them.

Shelby: Three of the three people who are not fans?

Sara: Three people who are not Chiefs fans in Kansas City. And I have to tell you, now having done this multiple times, and I can say that smugly, I have been through multiple Super Bowls with the Chiefs in it. The one downside is we don't have normal Super Bowl parties. Nobody talks. It is very stressful.

Shelby: Okay, so everybody's just dialed in, you mean?

Sara: Everybody's dialed in, kids included. Like, every year I kind of, I have it in me to go to the Super Bowl party and expect to socialize, and then I get there, and I remember, “Oh no, we're all here for one purpose.”

Shelby: Yes, yes.

Sara: And there is no fun to be had. I mean, it's fun if you're winning.

Shelby: What about the commercials?

Sara: Well, no, the commercials are an - everybody's taking bathroom breaks, like, no.

Shelby: Yes, that doesn't happen at all.

Well, I wanted to ask you about that, mostly because, full disclosure, I was born in California, two hours from the Bay Area, and I'm a 49ers fan, so.

Sara: So that game, I mean, it was an awesome game, and honestly, y'all should have won.

Shelby: It was an awesome game. It was a fantastic game. I know. Let's be honest, it was not our best.

Sara: Like, I think even well into the night, my husband and I were like, did we just really win that? Like, did that just happen?

Shelby: Yes. Well, my, my kids and my wife are not football fans. They don't give a rip at all. They don't care. I mean, they like the environment of like, food and hanging out with people and stuff like that. But I was up by myself watching to the end of the game.

Sara: And then went to bed very unhappy.

Shelby: And I came to bed, and I was like, yes, it's like, it's okay. I tried to remind myself it's just a football game.

Sara: Oh, yes.

Shelby: It doesn't necessarily matter. But I figured, you've had a good couple of years if you're an NFL fan. So, yes.

Sara: Yes.

Shelby: Okay.

So, Sarah, switching topics away from football, I read your book, The Gift of Limitations. And I'm not trying to be hyperbolic, but in many ways, it has been discipling me for the last month or so since I started reading it, meaning not only have I learned from it, which I have, it's been definitely true, but it's changed my perspective on how to view and evaluate the limitations of my life.
My day to day posture, thoughts, and actions are different than they used to be in relation to the boundaries that God has placed in my life, specifically. And I owe that to your book, so I'm super, super grateful.

Sara: That is a super sweet word to hear. Like, super encouraging.

Shelby: Yes, and I am under full awareness that I am not the target demographic for the book. [Laughter]

But it's so helpful. So just for anyone who might not understand maybe the metaphor that you're setting up for us in the book, what do you mean by studying the fence lines of our lives and glancing over the fence to the space beyond it? Because you talk about that a lot.

Sara: I think we do it accidentally and we do it all day long. I think from my teenage years up until now, well beyond my teenage years, I can see each season and how I. always had my eye on what was ahead, always had my eye on what I could accomplish, or what was just around the corner, and I didn't really develop eyesight for what I was living in right in front of me.

So, I use the analogy of the fence line in the book, because I think we can think in our twenties, you know, you're in college, towards the end of college maybe. Thinking about, am I going to get married, what am I going to do post college? Your eyes are over the fence line. Maybe if you are, you're dating somebody and it's pretty exciting and you're thinking, is this going to be the one and what's our life going to look like together?

Over the fence line, you just started this new career and rather than looking right in front of you going, how can I do the best job at this job right now? You're going, okay, what steps do I need to take to get that next promotion? Your eyes are over the fence line. I think all of us do it in every season.

Shelby: Yes, it's definitely something that's common, and I'm glad that you broke it down like that, because I think that maybe the opposite communication that's coming from your book is something that butts right up against what young people are dealing with all the time.

So, I think they might hear what you have to say, and maybe ask the question, “What's wrong with looking over the fence line? What's wrong with maybe even pushing back on the limitations that I have? Aren't I supposed to do that in this world? Like break boundaries.” What would you consider--

Sara: --Overcome.

Shelby: Yes. Overcome. Or would you even consider self-improvement to be a wrong thing as they think about the limitations there?

Sara: I think that's such a great question, because I think it really lies in the minutia of our lives and our relationship with God, our private conversations with God, and with ourselves. There are times where we are absolutely intended to overcome, where we're intended to really push ourselves to the limit. But I think there are also times where we as a culture are very oriented towards not paying attention to our limits and overcoming our boundaries.

Shelby: Yes, yes.

Sara: Such that we can run ourselves into the ground. So, it really boils down to when the world gets quiet at two o'clock in the afternoon or at ten o'clock at night or at eight o'clock in the morning, what is my motivation and why am I pushing so hard and is God leading me to do this, or am I doing this because I'm scared out of my mind, if the next season doesn't include another level of achievement?

Shelby: Would you say that that's kind of the practical of how to determine the difference between what I should push on and what I should just accept?

Sara: Yes, I think self-awareness. I talk about it in the book. I have a whole chapter about it. I think self-awareness is a really under appreciated, under awarded skill, but it's a highly essential skill to navigating our twenties and thirties. It’s understanding why am I doing what I'm doing? What is my drive here?

I think about even recently, there's been something that I've been praying for in my own life, and it's felt like such a good and right and holy thing. And I have devoted a ton of time and prayer and reached out to friends and please pray for this and marked it in my life and journaled about it. And yet when I got really quiet, I started to notice my drive here is actually because I'm scared out of my mind, that if this thing doesn't happen, who am I?

Shelby: Right, yes.

Sara: I can make it seem really good and right. But ultimately underneath it all, I'm killing myself for this. I'm killing myself in prayer for this thing that maybe actually I wasn't meant to have.

Shelby: I think that's kind of maybe the scariest part of all of this, because your motivations, what's going on in your heart, is not something that anybody else could see besides you or God. You two are the only ones who know genuinely, and sometimes you don't even know yourself. Like, you don't, you're just kind of lying to yourself.

Sara: Most of us don't know, right?

Shelby: Yes.

Sara: I know when I'm reaching in the fridge over and over again. I know when I am scrolling, like mindlessly. Those are little clues to me something else is going on. But I typically, it's not that I know that I'm unsettled, it's actually just that I've been on my phone a ton. Okay, maybe something's going on.

Shelby: Are those like maybe warning signs for you that you're able to go, “Oh, maybe I should pay attention to what's happening in my heart?”

Sara: My big warning signs are: if I'm taking my free time to scroll mindlessly, if I'm reaching in the fridge a lot, if I'm snapping at the people closest to me, if I'm feeling highly irritated with my circumstances, to even just this morning - I was short with the veterinarian about getting my dog in. I hung up that phone, and I went something's going on inside of me, because it really wasn't her missing my appointment.

Shelby: How were you able to get to a spot where you were able to see maybe those warning signs and even know that you're not doing well? Is it just something that happens with time or wisdom or is there a discipleship element where somebody has spoken into your life? What has it been for you?

Sara: I think there's been a lot of factors. I think there is the discipleship element where we consciously choose to go part of my growth in God is that I begin to understand what's happening inside of me. But I also think, and here's the wonderful news, is that God is at work much harder than us to help us find that Psalm 16:6, “The boundary lines for me have fallen in pleasant places.”

And so, I would say to anybody listening, right now there are circumstances that God is using in your life that you might be certain are circumstances given to you from Satan. [Laughter]

Shelby: Yes, yes.

Sara: But they might really actually be God is highlighting boundary lines in your life.

Shelby: That’s good.

Sara: And He's using them to teach you.

I feel like forty-six years in, I'm going, there's a lot that God has used in my life circumstantially that I wanted to pray away that was actually from Him. And that was where I started to dial into asking the question, “What's happening inside my heart right now?” Rather than, will this situation move what's happening in my heart?

Shelby: Yes. Well, that reminds me of what the culture communicates to young people over and over and over again, chase your dreams. Or follow your dreams no matter what, don't let anybody stop you from reaching your dreams. It's just repeated again and again. But you talk about how sometimes God allows what you call “the great death of some of our greatest dreams” and how God knows best when that actually happens.

So, how do we know when a dream is dead, because God wants it to die, or if the perceived death of a dream is just something to test our resolve and make us stronger by relentlessly pursuing it?

Sara: Yes. Well, I think it goes back to self-awareness again. I think maybe to your earlier point, to your earlier question, some of it was leaning into circumstances. Some of it was discipleship. I think to grow our self-awareness, such that we can even ask those questions of ourselves in God, building in a few minutes a day to check in. A lot of us have a category for, I'm going to have my time that I'm going to read the Bible.

Shelby: Yes.

Sara: But we might not have a category for what about two or three other times in the day where I'm doing a five minute “sit in quiet.” Some traditions call it “the daily office,” where I'm going to sit in silence for two minutes. Silence - I mean, try that. That's a long two minutes.

Shelby: Yes yes.

Sara: And then, I'm going to open to a piece of Scripture, or maybe a devotional piece, and ask myself a few questions about it, and then I'm going to actually look inside and go, what's going on in here?

Shelby: Mm hmm.

Sara: You know, ask myself a few questions before God. I think over time that grows our awareness that there is a world happening inside of our heads that we often don't even understand or name. I have six thousand thoughts in a day. [Laughter] So, there's a whole world in there, and I can start to go, what are those thoughts?

Then as we grow in our self-awareness, our dreams look a little bit different in some senses to us, where I might start to go, where did that dream get birthed? Could it be that God is in that dream, but maybe it's not meant to play out the way that I thought?

Shelby: Yes.

Sara: I think of like in my twenties, my dad was diagnosed with cancer, and he died. My dad was, in many ways, the center of my world. I mean, I remember as a kid, my biggest fear in life was that my dad would die. It's such a strange thing to say now that I spent untold amounts of time being afraid that my dad would die, and he did. My dad died young.

I think about the dream that I had of him being involved in my kids lives. The dream that I had of him speaking into my dreams, and how that really abruptly ended. He had a fast growing cancer and died very quickly. At that time, it felt so wrong, like how could God have allowed this, truly this death wasn't God.

Now I look back and I go, there was so much of a larger story happening, but I was so centered in on my dad, that I couldn't see that God still had different dreams for my life that didn't include him physically, but still included maybe the gifts he imparted to me and I could say that fifteen years later.

Shelby: Yes. It's interesting too, the element of suffering is one that always brings us in many ways to our true self of what we believe about ourselves and what we believe about God, certainly. I've seen that happen in my life with the suffering that I've had. I'm a chronic pain patient. I have chronic nerve pain.

I've also seen it in a lot of my friends who are younger than me or about the same age as me. One of my friends about five years ago was diagnosed with ALS. He's much younger than me. And I was like, “How in the world could this happen?” Like praying for his healing, and it not happening so far. You know, just crying basically every time I think about him and his young kids, because his kids are about toddler age.

I'm like, what is going to happen now? I met with him and he's at a point now where he can't really talk well. It's difficult to understand him. I asked him, “How does he spend his time?” He basically said through kind of difficult speech, I spend most of my day reading my Bible, because I want to get to know Jesus as much as I can on this side before, I see Him face to face on the other side.

I’m like only that kind of perspective comes through suffering. Only that kind of perspective comes through going through the misery of what he's been through. Because there's no denying it, it's been absolutely miserable for him and his family.

Sara: Mm hmm.

Shelby: But I'm like, there's this bittersweet, horrible diagnosis from living in a broken, sinful world, but God utilizing it and using it to help him, and his heart become closer to Jesus than he's ever been.

Sara: Wow.

Shelby: So, it can be horrible and beautiful at the same time.

Sara: Absolutely.

Shelby: I'm sure people reached out to you about their personal stories in the midst of this.

Sara: Yes, I've heard so many stories. It's interesting, because I think about where was I in my twenties, when I really thought some people would have hard stories and some people wouldn't. I think the older I get, and this is going to sound like, “Oh no, turn this off right now, after she says this.” But the older I get, the more that I see those words in the Word, “In this world, you will have trouble.” I just see it. Nobody is exempt.

But I think the hope in that is, if you were to take the dream that you have right now in your heart. Ultimately there is, maybe there's some personal ambition there, maybe there's some desire for earthly praise, but there are some deeper, meaningful desires in that. Whether it's, I want the fruit, I want love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, that's what I want out of this.

Shelby: Finding the root of it, yes.

Sara: Some of the deep dreams and desires in our hearts will only happen through suffering. I think we as sometimes attach a physical scenario like, this is what it's going to look like. When in actuality the Lord may turn that upside down, but we'd still get profound fruit from the suffering. I think a significant part of my story is I went into my twenties thinking I'm going to be like everybody else and get married and have kids.

My husband and I walked through twelve years of infertility, and I had no idea. I mean, that's a long time. I had no idea that my life would get halted when everybody else's was continuing to advance. Yet I look back, and I go I did want deep things of God. I knew that I did want that. I just didn't want it that way.

Shelby: Yes.

Sara: But what came of that was that connection to God that I couldn't have had if I had the dream that I thought I wanted.

Shelby: Yes, that's good. It's only recognizable by going through it the way that you did. You have to experience it sometimes. And again, we always want to sidestep that or prevent it from happening, but it just doesn't [happen] that way. It's not the way God works.

You say that God mercifully prevents us from things like the success that we think we need, or maybe what someone has been working toward their whole life. You know?

Sara: Mm hmm.

Shelby: So how would you define success from a biblical perspective?

Sara: Whoo!

Well, I think God works that new definition into us through our circumstances. I think I would have defined it differently ten years ago and probably even more differently twenty years ago. But right now, I would say a deep awareness that I am known and loved.

Like a deep awareness. That I am the daughter of God and that isn't changing. He loves having me sit on His lap and that to me is success. I wouldn't have said that in my twenties. I think in my twenties, I was looking for a lot more for impact. I was involved in a ministry that was very centered around evangelism and that's just my passion. I love sharing the Lord with people who don't know Him. So, I measured my success by souls saved.

Shelby: Yes.

Sara: Which is weird because I feel like that's maybe two degrees off of center, because I think God's heart is really for souls to be saved.

Shelby: Yes, of course. Yes.

Sara: But I found that I would feel worse about myself, when I was less successful, and I'd feel better about myself when I was more successful. When my ministry was growing, I felt great about myself. When my ministry wasn't growing, I felt bad about myself.

That was the beginning of a longer trail of discovering: Oh, maybe success actually is me being deeply aware that I am loved by God, I am his beloved, and nothing's going to change that. The more that that grows inside of me, the more that I become kind of a force and a fierce person to reckon with.

Shelby: Right. Sarah, I don't know if anybody would define success that way. At least initially, if you were to like poll a bunch of people in America today and ask what success is, I don't know if anybody would answer that question that way. I think also--

Sara: --But can I interrupt you though?

Shelby: Yes.

Sara: Am I allowed to interrupt the interviewer?

Shelby: Please ask, yes.

Sara: I think you're right. Nobody would say that. But if we all looked at the moments in our life where we felt most at peace and most alive. Almost inevitably, they are tied to a sense of deep belonging of deep connectedness. Sometimes it's just deep belonging to our spouse or deep belonging to our family, which is maybe a hue of deep belonging and deep rootedness in God.

Like, nobody would define it that way. But I feel the older we get, the more we go, I am most at peace when I am at peace with myself, and I'm at peace with myself because I know that God really likes me.

Shelby: So, this actually isn't the end of my conversation with Sarah . But she brought up so many good points already that I wanted to end this episode now, and give you a chance to think about what she actually said.

So, what stuck out to you? I hope you'll spend some time in prayer and reflection about Sarah's ideas on accepting your limitations. Having self-awareness about your motivations and redefining your definition of success.

On next week's episode, Sarah Haggerty will come back, and we'll dive even deeper into some of these topics.

And if you liked this episode of Real Life Loading, or you thought it was helpful, I'd really love it if you'd share today's podcast with a friend. Wherever you get your podcasts, it could really advance what we're doing with Real Life Loading, if you'd rate and review us. It's especially easy to find us on our social channels. Just search for Real Life Loading…, or you can look for our link tree in the show notes.

I want to thank everybody on the Real Life Loading team. I'm Shelby Abbott, and I'll see you back next time on Real Life Loading…

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